The Beauty in Her Darkness: A Story of Addiction
I barely knew Fallon, but something about her has always touched my heart. Maybe it’s because of that underlying sadness hiding in her hazel eyes…maybe it’s the realization that me and her have a million things in common. I don’t know if we were ever really friends. They say she doesn’t have real friends, just people she uses, for her nefarious purposes, but I’ve never believed she was that manipulative. I only met her a few times, for fairly brief periods, and her story is not mine to tell, but this is what I know of that pretty, frail girl I met last year…
My best friend was the reason we met. She had recently started college and Fallon was one of the new friends she met in her Culinary class. My best friend was also my worst enemy at times, and she hadn’t had many friends besides me in high school, but I was glad she had met someone new. Fallon was extremely thin- thinner than me, despite my bulimia, and she had flawless alabaster skin and hazel eyes behind wiry glasses. Her dark mahogony hair was cut short, in a pixie cut, with a long ponytail in the back, and I couldn’t held admiring the uniqueness of the style even if I secretly wished she would grow it out. Me and my boyfriend were living at a hotel, as we had been for a couple of monthes by then, and I had recently started working as a prostitute, a fact which my best friend had already informed Fallon of. I felt ashamed, and prayed that this pretty girl wouldn’t think less of me. I wanted her approval, and I wanted to be her friend also. We hung out a few times, with my BFF and my boyfriend, and she got me smoking weed, something I rarely did before. I was more of a drinker, at that time a very heavy one, and I was fairly intoxicated many of the times I saw her.
Fallon had a good job, as a cashier at Petsmart, and was taking culinary classes at the technichal college. She had a boyfriend who obviously adored her and looked at her with pride in his eyes. Her grandparents paid for her to have her own trailer, and she had a nice car that they had also bought for her. One day she let our friend drive it, and it got wrecked, when me and my boyfriend were in the backseat, but her grandparents bought her an even better one, and no one was seriously harmed. Her life seemed pretty together…she was very intelligent, outgoing, sweet, and easy to get along with. She had one secret that not too many people knew; she was in love with a girl, Victoria, who lived a few states away, and she blushed and giggled whenever they were texting back and forth. She wasn’t really a lesbian, but she did say she was, more than once, and she would go on and on about Victoria, a fact that my friend and I were both slightly envious of. Fallon had tried many drugs, and smoked weed frequently, but I never got the impression that she was a junkie. She seemed so together…I would never have thought she could fall so hard.
Fallon’s friendship with our mutual friend faded, after a few arguments and too much drama. Fallon wasn’t a giver of too many chances, and she had had it with some of the threats and lies she dealt with from her. But me and Fallon stayed friends and still spoke, and I developed a crush on her. She made out with me once, when we were at Ron Jons with a couple of her friends from work and my boyfriend, and I would have loved to take it farther, or at least to hold her, but she giggled after, and I knew she was mostly doing it for show. Fallon did whatever she felt like, whenever she felt like it, and she always had fun with every passing day. She was more alive than anyone I ever met.
Unfortunately, I almost led her down a bad road, the one I was on- the road of a teenage prostitute, which is not what I wanted for her. I needed her help with a favor, and she went behind my back, and met up with a client of mine, and for a few weeks was in the business, sleeping with people for money, just like me. I knew she was better than that, and I felt guilty when she told me. I didn’t want to see her get used up and jaded. But she quit just as quickly as she started, right before she was supposed to work a call with me, and I didn’t hear from her for some monthes. I texted her, hoping and praying for a reply, but eventually gave up. Wherever she was, she wasn’t thinking of me, and there was no point in trying to reach her.
Two monthes ago Fallon texted me. She needed me and my boyfriend to do her a favor- to buy a nasal decongestant from a pharmacy for her. Apparently, it’s an OTC medicine that people can only buy three times a month. Why? Because it’s used to cook chrystal meth. So since I didn’t have an ID, she needed my boyfriend’s. She had apparently already bought her amount for the month, and her boyfriend’s, and gone through other friends as well. I suppose I was pretty low on the list, having never been in her orbit much too begin with. Despite the feeling of being used, I talked my boyfriend into helping her. At first, I had no idea that the stuff we were getting for her was used to make meth. I personally had no idea how meth or any other drug was made, at least not at the time. I still have little knowledge about the process. Anyway, her and her new boyfriend came and picked us up and we got her the stuff she needed, and gave her some gas money. She looked thinner, withdrawn. Paler than before, with dark shadows under her eyes and highly dilated pupils. She showed me her thin arms, covered in scars and in track marks from shooting up. My heart jumped to my throat seeing the change in this beautiful girl. Upon talking to her more, I discovered she had quit her job at Petsmart, dropped out of college, and no longer received support from her grandparents. She had been in trouble with the law, for something, and she had lost many of her friends and the place she stayed. She was still bubbly and outgoing, but she was tweaked, constantly, and obviously far gone.
I was torn- and have since remained such- because part of me wants to save her, hold her close, and help her get away from her addiction and from her drug dealing boyfriend who was clearly bad news and slightly crazy. The other part of me envied her, that she remained high, every day, far above all the problems and pain that the rest of us have to suffer. She offered to let me shoot up some, but I didn’t. But, it pains me to admit, the only reason I didn’t join her in her drug induced demise was because my own boyfriend forbade me doing so. I longed to feel whatever she was feeling, because even if it was fake, she seemed happy. Still, I know this road all too well. She isn’t the first friend to fall into that old familiar pattern of drug use. I saw her once more after that- her and her boyfriend came over, seemingly too hang out, but ended up doing the final processes of cooking meth in our bathroom, and then quickly left. I haven’t heard from her since, and I doubt I will. She was talking of leaving this town, her and him starting new somewhere else. But I’ll always wonder what demons haunted her so much that she would wander down such a dark road. I bet her grandparents are dissappointed. She had everything, and now…now what? They won’t stay together, or even if they do, it won’t be enough. But she’s beyond my help, soaring above me until she finally collapses.
In my heart, Fallon has a place, even though I know so little about her. I’ll always remember the taste of her kiss, and the way she sings along to the radio in her car, loudly, not caring how she sounds. She’s scattered, all over the place, out of control, possibly a little crazy…but she’s so beautiful to me. If she ever needs a friend, I hope she knows I’ll be here. Waiting patiently.
TheVoiceOfTeenageProstitution 